Why are summoners so neglected?

[Jerbob]

Incoming wall of text

The current system prohibits it. They need to do something about the command delay first...

Agreed - in all honesty I think this should be fixed regardless of any "revised SMN" plans. If pets are unresponsive and failing to execute moves that's a bug - excuses that it's a "pet problem" are completely unacceptable.

Are you going to be commanding the pet to move to dodge mechanics as well as moving yourself? Theyd have to make pets not immune to most attacks anymore if they were the brunt of a summoners dps. That too i think is why.

I think this would be an important part of the job, were it implemented. Pets auto-dodging mechanics or being immune to the damage would be pretty cheesy, so I think the Summoner would have to actively mitigate the effects. Souped-up stoneskins, damage immunity for single digit seconds and the like, all actively cast by the Summoner - I think this would be quite fun, and fit with the idea of the Summoner empowering their pet rather than the other way around. Of course, this active mitigation would be weaker if the pet is actively tanking, just to keep things balanced.

Look, conceptually there really isn't anything wrong with Summoners in XIV as a feasible job. ..... However, it would come to the surprise of no one if this iteration of Summoner in the Final Fantasy series becomes one of if not the most ridiculed addition...

I completely agree with this viewpoint - it's so important to make the distinction between functionality and aesthetics/theme. XIV's SMN is fine, does damage, blah blah, but... for some people that's not the point!

First is concept. FFX's summons basically replaced the entire party to justify how strong they were, and that's overpowered as hell and not something that would work here.

Completely agree that this sort of thing woul be really silly in XIV. However, the idea of the summoned pet being the focus of the Summoner, and not the bio/etc spells, is something I think is very transferrable with a bit of thinking.

First is concept.Every class in this game follows a template of 18 class skills, 10 job skills, and 11 traits.

I'm not sure this is actually true. Even if we look at XIV's SMN, it has distinctly more abilities than other classes/jobs because the pets each have at least four unique abilities (three special attacks + unique Enkindles, not including their auto-casting spells). AST has the individual cards on top of Draw that make up an entire mechanic based around "extra" abilities.

FFXI actually underlines this quite well, since SMNs get almost nothing between version updates additions unless the devs add new avatars.

I agree that XI's SMN is hard to manage for the developers, though they are notoriously bad at understanding how the job works. A lot of it seems to stem from a lack of resources/motivation/imagination/remotely caring about the job - as you say, Odin/Alexander are prime (pun intended) examples of this, and I spent enough time ranting about those when they were released. They promised to add more Blood Pacts to Cait Sith, but apparently that was a lie as they still haven't materialised.

I don't think it's necessarily quite as bad as has been made out - a lot of jobs in XI don't receive improvements very often, and SMN has had some non-Avatar related additions over time (though admittedly these are often just "ability X is slightly less terrible now"). Still, it's a fair point.

FFX's aeons were obsoleting each other

This is a problem I'm not sure how to resolve, in part because of how restrictive and... I don't want to say bland, but you know what I mean... XIV's combat system can be at times. We don't have elemental affinities worth discussing, we don't have any scope for hybrid jobs, and we don't have any scope for doing things outside of an accepted paradigm. XI uses these techniques for its SMN with varying degrees of success - increasingly successful as time goes on, I'd argue - but here I agree it's not really possible without a significant change in the game's direction and operation.

Ultimately I'd even be happy with the three "role pets" we have now operating under revised SMN pet-focused mechanics, but a lot of people certainly wouldn't.

It was seriously bad... and I am unconvinced its any better even nowadays...

Play it before you make this judgement! It's still there!

Why in the hell would you want to play anything as boring as that...

I actually find pet-focused jobs to be really interesting and exciting. It's a personal preference thing. Some people like hitting stuff with pointy sticks, some people like to cast the magics that make the bad guys fall down, and some people like ordering their floating potatoes to rough up some coeurls. I personally find hitting stuff with sticks really dull, but I'm fully accepting that some people enjoy it. That's why we have different jobs that basically all do the same thing.

These threads are never gonna end are they?

Not while some people still aren't happy! That's what these forums are for!

Honestly, I think the best thing they can do for SMN is to stop focusing on the pet as the "summon".

I would really hate this, personally. It's probably a really good decision from an ease-of-design perspective, but it would even further remove any interest I have in playing the job. Honestly, I think they need to have two different, parallel paths for SMN - the "trance" variant that a lot of people really like, and a pet-focused one for other people.

Sorry about the wall. My bad for not looking at the forum for a few days...